U S Green Building Council

The article about the new Los Angeles Police Department headquarters in downtown Los Angeles ["LAPD Green: Does New Garden Keep in Step With Eco-Aware Times?," May 23] missed a couple of salient points, not just for "conservationists," as Emily Green wrote, but for all human beings dwelling within our city. The LAPD landscape is what we landscape design professionals call green outside, brown inside. About 800,000 to 1 million gallons of water annually are required to keep three-quarters of an acre of Marathon turf lawn healthy, if maintained at a height of 4 to 7 inches.

February 22, 2012 | By Terry Gardner, Special to the Los Angeles Times

This post has been corrected. See the note at the bottom for details. President Obama's recent stay at the eco-friendly Element Hotel in Summerlin, Nev ., has inspired a deal. Apparently, the president suggested that his staff might want to miss their flight to stay an extra night, which led Element to resurrect an extended stay deal that has been popular with business travelers. The deal: Element By Westin is offering a “stay three, stay free” deal in which guests get a free fourth night when they check in on a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday or Saturday into any of the 10 eco-oriented Element hotels.

In 1949, Steve Gainey's father and grandfather started manufacturing pottery with equipment they purchased from Pacific Clay Products' closed Inglewood factory. From the original product line of dog dishes and crockery, Gainey Ceramics evolved into an architectural pottery maker, specializing in decorative tile and commercial plant containers for the indoor-outdoor "plantscaping" industry. A third-generation pottery-maker, Gainey figures his La Verne company is one of the last continuously operating ceramic manufacturers around.

The 480 apartments coming to market in Pasadena don't look much different from the competition, but they do smell different. Smoking isn't allowed anywhere on the premises. Developer Sares-Regis Group wants a coveted LEED certificate from the U.S. Green Building Council that means the property meets certain environmental standards. Among the standards is good air quality, and one way to achieve it is to make sure smoke doesn't wend its way from one apartment to another. That means that tenants and visitors who feel compelled to light up can be seen indulging themselves across the street from the eight-acre Westgate Apartments complex, said Nathan Carlson, director of development at Sares-Regis.

As bartender Michelle Dell-Colli is fitted for her new uniform, she appears ready to burst at the seams, not because it's too tight but, rather, from the excitement of working in an environmentally progressive enterprise. "When the Mirage opened, it set the pace for luxury and great service," said Dell-Colli, a former employee there who starts work Dec. 16 at Aria Resort & Casino. "CityCenter showcases a green development." All four of the buildings scheduled to open in December -- Aria, Crystals, Mandarin Oriental and Vdara -- have earned the vaunted LEED gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.

The biggest independent advertising agency headquartered in California, Rubin Postaer & Associates, has agreed to move its offices to the Playa Vista neighborhood in one of the largest leases in the region this year. The ad agency, now in Santa Monica, will pay about $200 million over 15 years to occupy most of a former post office distribution center that has been converted to offices on Jefferson Boulevard adjacent to the Playa Vista development. Rubin Postaer will join a growing cluster of creative and tech businesses taking over a former industrial district south of Marina del Rey. Other firms that have recently signed large leases in Playa Vista are Fox Interactive Media, which oversees News Corp.'s Internet properties including My Space, and technology company Belkin International Inc. "We like what's happening down there," said Vince Mancuso, chief financial officer of Rubin Postaer.

When Toyota Motor Corp. moved one of its divisions into an environmentally friendly, or "green," building in Torrance three years ago, it expected to save on its energy bills. The building offered natural lighting, electricity-generating rooftop solar panels and water recycling. But something else also happened. Employee morale jumped while absenteeism fell. The overall energy and worker productivity savings more than offset the added cost of making the facility environmentally friendly.

On bright days, the rooftop of the Anaheim Hilton is so blindingly white that it looks like a mirror positioned directly at the sun. That dazzling glare might just be the greenest thing to happen to the top of a building since solar panels. The white coating deflects nearly 85% of the heat that hits it, reducing the surface temperature by as much as 50 degrees. That means less energy is needed to cool the hotel's interior, cutting air-conditioning costs and carbon emissions.

December 9, 2008 | Marla Dickerson, Dickerson is a Times staff writer.

Call it the ultimate plug-in recharger. A team of Southern California developers today is taking the wraps off what may be the world's greenest aviation facility, one capable of powering a Boeing 757 with solar energy while the aircraft is on the ground for maintenance. The new 60,000-square-foot structure at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank is believed to be the industry's only solar-powered airport hangar.

Craig Ehrlich didn't particularly want a modern house. But everything he valued - light, air, indoor-outdoor living, sustainable building materials - has led to this: a recently completed 1,150-square-foot house in Santa Monica that feels much larger thanks to its modern sculptural design. With its exterior wood screens and expanses of glass, the house is immediately intriguing, but the interior elements - the geometric cutouts in the architecture and the dynamic double-height spaces - are what make the small house feel substantial.